And thou who thinkest to seek me; Know that thy seeking
and yearning shall avail thee not unless thou know the mystery, that if that
which thou seekest thou findest not within thee; Thou wilt never find it
without thee. For behold; I have been with thee from the begining, and I am
that which is attained at the end of desire.
Sources and Influences
BAM: And if thou sayest, I have journied unto thee, and it availed me
not, Rather shalt thou say, I called upon thee, and I waited patiently, and Lo,
Thou wast with me from the beginning For they that ever desired me, shall ever
attain me, even to the end of all desire.
Cro. LXV: But I have called unto Thee, and I have journied unto Thee,
and it availed me not. I waited patiently, and thou wast with me from the
beginning. (2.59-60)
‘Alipilli’ cited in L.A. Cahagnet, Magnetic Magic, 1898:[1] That
if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee; thou wilt never find
it without thee.
Cro. LXV: They that ever desired Thee shall obtain Thee, even at the End
of their Desire. (3.63)
Thealogy
This final part
of the Charge returns to the important theme of the presence of the Goddess
within the witch, and the nature of the witch’s search for her. For the Wiccan
nature of the search for the Goddess and its end are both contained in the
realisation that she is already within, reminiscent of the maxim found in the
mystery religions and subsequent occult traditions: ‘Know thyself,’ concluding
the Charge’s journey inwards to the revelation that the journey ends within.
The
understanding of knowing ourselves must inevitably be coloured by the event of
greater understanding in psychology and psychoanalysis from the nineteenth
century onwards. Dion Fortune is an example of an occultist who united the
understandings of traditional occultism and of modern psychology. The Gods and
Goddesses can even be seen as representative of forces within, which is not
necessarily to denigrate their existence as genuine powers in the world, but
can aid in the understanding of these powers, as Tau Allen Greenfield writes:
‘True occult initiates have always regarded the Ultimate Reality as beyond all names and description. Named “deities” are, therefore, largely symbols. “Isis” is a symbol of the long-denied female component of deity to some occultists. “Pan” or “The Horned God” or “Set” or even “Satan” are symbols of unconscious, repressed sexuality. To the occultist, there is no Devil, no “god of evil.” There is, ultimately, only the Ain Sof Aur of the Qabala: the limitless light of which we are but a frozen spark. Evil, in this system, is the mere absence of light. All else is illusion.‘The goal of the occult path of initiation is balance. In Freemasonry and High Magick, the symbols of the White Pillar and Black Pillar represent this balance between conscious and unconscious forces.’[2]
The Goddess may
be seen, returning to the idea of the collective unconscious, as something
which exists as a symbol in the collective unconscious of humanity, which is
why she seems familiar to us and may be related to the concept of morphic
resonance mentioned above. Interpreting the Great Mother as a Jungian archetype
may appear to resolve the problem of the ahistoricity of this idea, but in its
turn it creates a different sort of history. That is, in looking back at the
existence of what we can now understand as an archetype, we undertake an
essentially modern search, and once again may be imposing modern ideas on
historical images. However Neumann writes that in seeking for a psychological
understanding of the Great Mother this may be inevitable:
‘If we offend against “history” by removing documents and representations from their cultural context, we hope to compensate by correlating our archetypal investigation with a “psychohistory,” that is to say, with the stages in the development of the human psyche. Taking the development of consciousness as the decisive phenomena of human history, we arrive at an arrangement of the phenomena that does not, to be sure, coincide with the usual sequence of historical events, but makes possible the psychological orientation we require.’[3]
The journey
within for the witch mirrors the Goddess’s descent to death and ascent, and is
embodied in the initiations. Vivianne Crowley, who has perhaps the most
psychological understanding of the Wiccan mysteries of published writers, believes
inner transformation - with magical techniques and a Goddess religion – to be
one of three facets found in Wicca.[4]
She understands the Wiccan initiation both to cause entry into a particular coven
or tradition and into the priestly, magical and mystical ‘current’ of Wicca,
which she equates to renovatio, one
of the forms of rebirth identified by Jung. [5]
In the first
degree initiation, Crowley
identifies the significance of being skyclad as signifying how we come into the
world, as related to the rebirth of the initiation. The psychological aspects
of initiation she relates to a meditation in which the candidate is asked to
identify aspects of the personality she wishes to strengthen or weaken, with
the elements. In the ritual of elements balancing undertaken before the
initiation, the candidate is taken on an inner journey through her own
elements, which Crowley likens to the candidate invoking the elemental quarters
of her own personality; she states this is necessary because normally when the
circle is cast the elements are balanced by the callings, but at an initiation
the candidate is outside the circle when it is cast. The binding of the
candidate represents the state of the candidate before initiation for Crowley: she is still
bound to matter, and is not yet freed by initiation for her spiritual journey.
Crowley likens the
challenge to the candidate to that made by the guardian of the candidate’s unconscious:
passing through this gateway allows the candidate to face all that is
unconscious about herself and face her shadows and fears. In the first degree
initiation, the initiate is enabled to make the journey inwards to face these
things (and also face the Goddess, since it is within that we must find her),
in a position of vulnerability and weakness, and to progress from that position
to develop magical ability and insight.
Enabled to do
this work, the initiate can develop towards second degree initiation,
frequently marked in Wicca by the ability to teach and initiate others. Crowley understands the
much-misunderstood symbol of second degree initiation, the pentagram with two
points uppermost, in psychological terms. The spirit point is at the bottom,
underneath the points for the four elements, since spirit has emerged for the
candidate, but is not yet master over the others. Discovering what is hidden is
necessary for the pentagram to be turned over, with the spirit point at its
rightful top position, at third degree initiation.
By the second
degree initiation, the candidate, initiated in the first degree should have
begun to recognise and sort out his ‘stuff’. In Crowley’s psychological understanding, second
degree initiation is what enables a meeting between the Ego and the shadow side
of our personality, the unconscious: another appearance of the motif of
reconciliation of opposites, since the two sides of the personality have been
likened to dark and light, male and female.
Second degree
initiation brings the initiate into the succession of witches: the initiator
doesn’t only will his own power into her, but connects her to the power of all
witches, marking the initiate permanently as a witch, both in this and future
incarnations. Crowley comments that initiation of the second degree can be a
very lonely time for the witch, forced to rely on her own resources, which can
frequently be a time of disillusionment with the human frailties of her
initiators (compare with Farrar and Bone’s ‘Second Degree Syndrome’ mentioned
above).
The theme of
descent appears at second degree initiation, and Crowley once again interprets this in
psychological terms. For a man, she sees the significance of the descent at
second degree as being meeting his own anima, leading to reconciliation between
his male and female personalities. For a woman, the journey is embodied in the
Goddess’s journey into the underworld to meet the Dread Lord of Death, who
represents the kingdom of the unconscious mind, signifying the woman’s animus,
or male aspect. For both men and women, this leads to a meeting within aspects
of their personalities: for this a journey is required, it cannot just happen,
and this meeting is preparatory to the marriage between the two sides of the
personality, which will happen at third degree, and is embodied in the Great
Rite of Wicca.
Crowley understands
the third degree initiation to recognise a certain level of development within
the candidate, in which the seat of understanding is moving from the Ego to the
Self, marked by the lessening of inner conflicts. This degree is celebrated in
the Great Rites, which Crowley
equates to the Heiros Gamos – or sacred marriage – of ancient Paganism, in
which the participants are reborn as sacred twins. Crowley contrasts this Pagan approach to
sexuality, in which one is merged with another, with the Christian approach, in
which she states sexuality is ‘transmuted within the individual to achieve a
higher state of consciousness.’[6]
While the
externals of the third degree initiation consist of a sacred union of the
Goddess and God invoked into the priestess and priest, Crowley sees the inner significance of this
rite to be the union of the Jungian Ego with the Anima or Animus so that the
Self may be born. In this psychological understanding of the rite, this union
takes place and has its fruit inwardly. In this interpretation the third degree
opens the way for the reconciliation of the conflicting aspects of the
initiate’s personality:
‘The inner marriage is the marriage of soul and spirit, Ego and Self, and leads to individuation. It is the opening of the secret way by the few which will lead to the opening of the way for the many. The unconscious is like a jungle. Its paths must be hacked through with great effort and then kept open by continual use. ...‘...our lives can be considered a sacred quest. It is a quest which may have begun in this lifetime or many lifetimes before. It is a quest to find ourselves: who and what we really are. To do this we must first cease to pretend to be what we are not. We must cast away our Persona or mask. We must be prepared to confront the Shadow, that which we are and would rather we were not. Only then can we unify our conscious and unconscious minds and so give birth to the hidden Sun – the Self.’[7]
Crowley writes that
the three degrees of initiation in Wicca can represent the stages of this
process. Although this degree is analogous to the process of inidividuation,
she writes that it may involve even more inner turmoil because of its quality
of sacrifice. Individuation of the self involves clear differentiation from
others, and the third degree Wiccan’s role of caring for others can mean making
decisions on when to accede or not to the relentless demands which others may
make.
This journey
ends with meeting the archetype of the Wise Old Man (or Woman), who represents
our true self; Crowley
equates this to the concept of the knowledge and conversation of one Holy
Guardian Angel in ceremonial magic. From this point on, the person is wholly
reliant on inner wisdom, because the person has become her true self, and Crowley sees the
initiation rites of Wicca as opening the gates within the self which can enable
this to happen. The instruction which Crowley
quotes from the rite strikingly parallels the creation myth of the Feri
tradition quoted above:
‘Ere time began the One who is all looked inward on itself and beheld itself as though through a reflection in a pool and so came to self-awareness. And in that coming to self-awareness, the One was made two, subject and object; that which looks and that which is looked upon; and it divided from itself. And as the One was made Two, so the male and the female were made separate.‘And it came to pass that the Two who had come from the One sought to be joined together and made whole again. And so shall the male and the female be joined as One and from that union with the other who is in truth but part of the Self, the doubt and the fear which are the product of the delusion of solitude shall be banished.’[8]
Truly, she has
been within us from the beginning, the search starts within and ends within. In
a sense the search for the Goddess of the witches finds its end in abandoning
the search: when you no longer seek the Goddess you have found her. This
relates to the magical practice of forgetting about work in progress, as stated
above the reason is that turning over your intent in your mind calls it back to
you and prevents it happening. Similarly forgetting about the search for the
Goddess allows to come to mind the Goddess who is all things.
This thealogy differentiates
Wicca from the New Age movements, with which it is often compared, and in which
the emphasis is more on seeking human potential. In Wicca there is no further
potential to be achieved, or rather no further potential to be sought outside
the individual, because humans already have the fullness of their potential
within them, the Goddess is within, she is also everything, and her influence
can been seen and engaged with through the ‘correspondences’ of our lives.
[2] Tau Allen Greenfield:
The Secret History of Modern Witchcraft. In Richard Metzger (editor): Book
of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult. Disinformation
Company, New York,
2009, p. 267.
[4] Interview in Michael
Jordan: Witches: An Encyclopedia of Paganism and Magic. Kyle Cathie Ltd,
London, 2000.
[5] Vivianne Crowley: Wicca:
The Old Religion in the New Millenium (Revised and Updated). Thorsons, London, 1996.
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